The Hold Steady have garnered a lot of attention for their recent release, Boys and Girls in America They have been placed in more 2006 top ten lists than I care to find, but when I listed my top 5 songs for 2006, they didn't make the list, although I might live to regret that. I freely admit that I haven't listened to them as much as I should have, but I have my reasons.
Craig Finn's voice will strike you as thick and fluent, which fits his bar band the Hold Steady quite well. You might imagine that beer guzzling antics might have affected his vocal chords to that exact result. The instruments often seem to call to each other and respond, and you imagine that the band could fit perfectly in any dive on any seemingly forsaken street in any seemingly forsaken city in our seemingly forsaken nation. The Hold Steady sound like a bar singer set against a musical backdrop of every rockabilly group in music history. Big instruments, well placed splashes, and a heavy dose of drug and alcohol refences made this album one of the top albums of 2006 in terms of critical reviews.
Finn's first line is the thesis for the album when he says "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together," which he pulled from Jack Kerouac's On the Road (which was cleverly critiqued by Kim Kelly and Lindsay Weir in the one-season hit Freaks and Geeks). Finn goes on to explain the nuances of the pain of developing a higher drug tolerance, the difficulty of girls having to deal with rough and tumble dealers to get high alone, and not to mention the pain of seeing someone special at the bar and knowing they're already taken. On of Finn's most expressive lines is "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere."
I blame Brian Sorgenfrei, really. I think Brian Sorgenfrei is the reason that I can't listen to this album completely without becoming as sad as the characters the Hold Steady describes. This could be one of my faults, but because of Sorgenfrei's Findley's Challenge, or the SFC as I regularly call it, I can't help but watch helplessly as my worldview steamrolls anything in its way, submitting art and film and music and culture to the Gospel.
When we think of images of the alcoholic, who can ignore the tortured despair of Shooter? The town drunk of Hoosiers is living in the despair of a wife and son who have all but abandoned him. He takes refuge in the bottle and discovers that it is not a refuge at all. He finds no relief, and the pain he experiences devastates him even more. We spend our lives hoping to escape the pain we feel and the despair that it naturally entails.
God is not willing that human beings live in despair, however. Adam and Eve arguably had more cause for despair than any other human beings alive. They had sinned, and in their despair they fled from God and hid. If we look at Genesis 3 we might be tempted to think that God was angry, and to be sure he was, but he was also incredibly loving. He approached his fallen creation and instead of instantly (and justly!) destroying them, he promised that everything done would one day be undone. He promised a Savior (as it turns out, Jesus), and restored hope to his creation.
The Hold Steady talk about drugs as much as they talk about alcohol. Drugs like alcohol send you down. Other drugs get you high. They launch you into a realm of unreality in which pain is no longer existent, and the despair of life can be temporarily ignored.
So what's the problem with that? Everything that goes up must come down. When the high ends, the pain is still standing there, demanding that you deal with it or continue your flight. These escapes are only temporary.
We do not need to numb our pain or escape it. God has provided us with the means of addressing our pain. The promised Savior heals our pain, and does not bear the praising name of the Great Physician without living up to it. John saw in his vision that God had wiped away our many causes for pain and suffering, so much so that mourning and tears would be no more. Yet this vision is not confined to Revelation 21. God has been doing this all along. Since his first covenant with Adam, God has come into increasing contact with his people, and he daily offers us hope and peace. With the great and loving God that we have, why should we seek to escape pain? We should know our pain, and furthermore know the Savior that takes it on himself at the cross.
I am not asking everyone to be happy; I don't want that. I looked on iTunes once and found that someone had made a playlist called "Sad is the new happy." That is all fine with me, and that might be one of the main points of my generation. I am not alway happy, nor I want to be. I am however asking that we look to God and find hope and joy, that our real resting place be far above the definitions of sadnes or happiness. I suppose then, that I am asking that we believe the Gospel a little more.
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